A dirty old man or some old friends of Apollo's, Rosario thought, the lead weight pressing down on her gut. That sounded right.
Merlin owned a comedy club in Brooklyn. Rosario knew this because, in one of those uncanny coincidences that were becoming a fact of her existence, her aunt – Thalia, the Greek Muse of Comedy, who Lyra's father Saint Patrick was dating – helped run the place. They'd had drinks there on Lyra's birthday, and Lyra had craned around the bar hoping to steal a glimpse of the proprietor (he'd left earlier in the night, they'd found out subsequently, to their – mostly Lyra's – disappointment). Merlin's a great time! Thalia had said when asked, and possibly she would've said more, but on a silly impulse Rosario had asked the question both she and Lyra had been speculating on (Dumbledore beard: yes or no?) and Thalia had snorted her drink out through her nose.
Lyra would be down to go meet a wizard with her, even if he did turn out to be an old perv. Merlin, the Fates, whoever; Lyra would come back her up anywhere. But to ask for Lyra's help, Rosario first had to tell her about the... the whole prophecy deal, and she was still kinda stalled on that one. Between birthdays and parental dramas and meeting new family and looming finals, there just hadn't been a good time.
Rosario frowned. "How do you... know? If something's for real or if it's just..." In your head, she almost said, but it was all in her head and that was precisely the problem. Her brows pressed tightly together, as though she was staring down a particularly difficult equation. "Like, say I— saw something. And I didn't know what it was at the time, but way later something happened that made it click. You'd call that premonition, right? But what if I did know, like I read something in a book one time or saw something online and I just don't remember? Or what if there was no correlation and I'm just making patterns out of coincidences cuz that's what human brains've evolved to do? And, I mean, at that point I'm basically just imagining things."